Wellbeing

I wanted to share part of my own mental health journey with a hope it will encourage others to do the same. To open up and realise 'It's ok not to be ok' all the time, and know there is always someone out there willing to listen to you and that there are many helpful resources you can access to help put you on that road to recovery.

My story

It was the spring of 1999, I was 16 and my GCSC's were looming. I remember feeling under pressure from school and the outside world not to mess this up, because all through school life it is instilled in you that if you fail this, you will probably end up on societies scrap heap.
I would say I have never been the most confident or academic of people and have always felt anxiety in certain social situations from an early age, but strangely I was always quietly confident in my sporting ability. Early years of spending lots of time watching how the professionals would do it was the way I learnt to improve. Spending all of my spare time playing sport, mainly football & cricket, I never experienced any mental health issues. All the sport I was playing I genuinely believe this had a massive positive impact upon my body and more importantly my mind.

But darker times were ahead...

As I mentioned earlier I had put my low mood down to the stresses of my exams which were approaching fast and the constant worry of failure. At this point I was still playing for my local football and cricket teams but I was no longer interested. I had no energy and didn't feel like eating anything.

I was sat in my afternoon art lesson and nothing the teacher was saying was going in. I sat there feeling distant and I had lots of negative thoughts running through my mind and I felt as if a dark cloud had descended over me. I was scared and had never felt like this before. The negative thoughts were too much for me and I was getting overwhelmed by them. I remember feeling like I no longer wanted to be here.

These feelings went on for a good while, and my mum especially had seen a change in me and had started to to ask if I was ok. My answer would always be yes, because I didn't actually know at the time what was wrong and struggled to explain how I was feeling. I just knew I didn't feel right and definitely not myself.

Fast forward to the summer and several doctors appointments later with lots of different parts of my body discussed, but no questions about how I was feeling mentally?

I explained I was always tired, probably from the constant worry and over thinking of upcoming situations. I had no interest in the things I normally loved, a had a constant knotting in my stomach that made me feel sick and I had no appetite. I had gone from enjoying life and sport to not wanting to do anything other than constantly sleep.

Somehow I managed to get through the exams with support from my parents to keep pushing on even with this dark cloud over me, and churning stomach from the crippling anxiety. To my surprise my results were actually better than I expected, but of course my physical education (PE) grades were obviously the best. I now had a decision to make, to either apply to stay on at school (6th form) and further my studies or find a job.
Career choice is probably one of the biggest decisions in life we have to make, whether you carry on learning through school, then possibly university or go to college and or find a job. Possibly a job you are are not passionate about, but anyway I decided on the latter.

It seemed the easiest way out at the time, as my parents were keen for me to learn a trade with me coming from a farming background, and I was clear that attending 6th form at the school wasn't for me.
The search for my first job since leaving school had started and I remember picking up the local newspaper and turning to the jobs section. Advertising was a small local engineering company for an welding apprentice, so I nervously called them up and I was offered an interview there and then. I remember attending the interview in a shirt and tie and being offered the job. It was working four days and attending college on a Friday. I didn't hate my time working there (3 years) but all throughout my time doing my apprenticeship I still didn't feel the real me. I pushed on and never gave up in some of my darkest days, working in a dirty environment and sleeping most of the time I wasn't there. My mum would make sure I was on time for work in morning, neither of us knowing that I was suffering with what turned out to be depression and anxiety. Back in their day it was all about pulling yourself together or cheering yourself up, getting on with things, and not talking about these taboo subjects. Nobody really understood mental health problems and neither did I.

I was still trying to socialize with my friends and go out at the weekends drinking in the local pubs and bars around the local town. I thought drinking excess of alcohol would improve my mood, how wrong could I be. Initially I was correct, you get a bit of a high but then followed the huge low the next day. I have now learnt that alcohol and mental health do not mix, its just a vicious cycle and today I drink very little.

Fast forward about 5 years. I had come to the end of my junior football days (age17) and had stopped playing cricket and generally doing any exercise at all. I had booked back in with the doctor and was again sat in the waiting room. The apprehension of this even made me nervous, I'm here again. Will today be the day I find out whats wrong. As I sat waiting, I happened to find myself being drawn to the leaflets section on the wall. I fix my eyes on the one that says 'Outlook recovery' so I picked it up and read the front cover. It was all about recovering from mental illness.
Further reading led me to find out that the guy who had started the organisation had suffered from mental health problems himself, and had decided to spend lots of time researching mental health and the power of the mind. From what he had learnt he decided to make his own mental health recovery style plan. He wanted to make people aware what had helped him recover from his mental illness and share this to help others, including what he did daily to control his illness. This said, each person is different and what works for one person might not work for another. Anyway I put it in my pocket and was eventually called in to see the doctor.

"Come in, sit down" he said, "how can I help today?" I reluctantly tried to explain how I hadn't felt well for some time but I wasn't sure why. Further words were exchanged and then he asked me the question - "Do you feel down or depressed?"

I wasn't sure, I had never been depressed. He asked if I would do a mental health questionnaire, which I agreed to.

After he reviewed my score, he said he felt I was experiencing depression and anxiety and he then talked to me about the treatment options. He asked if I would be happy to try some anti-depressant tablets. I was unsure about this at first, but I decided to go away with the tablets and give them a try.

In the coming days I started the tablets and I looked into the outlook recovery plan. I was interested in the plan, and decided to sign up and give it a go.

The programme lasted a few months. The course literature was always sent through the post and there was no pressure or time frame for completion of the tasks. I enjoyed learning at my own pace which helped me to focus. Outlook was a non-profitable organization, but accepted donations if you were in a position to do so, which I was happy to do. After all, all the information I ended up gathering was priceless, some of which I still use certain aspects of it today.

Lighter days ahead...

As part of the recovery plan I learnt about the importance of exercise, diet, relaxation and good sleep patterns, alongside medication and vitamin supplements to aid my recovery. It took some time to get everything in to place and the recovery process to kick in. But it was down to me to change certain aspects of my life and avoid certain things. I started to exercise regularly, running, and going out on my bike. I soon noticed that the harder I exercised, the better I felt. I avoided junk food and caffeine and kept alcohol to a minimum. Ensuring enough sleep was never really a problem for me, as I was sleeping a lot at my worst point, as my mind was so tired and drained from the overwhelming negative thinking. Thankfully my sleep patterns would improve slightly further down the line though.

I went from strength to strength with my recovery and things started to improve. I still follow certain aspects of the recovery plan to this day to keep myself well and on top of things. I rarely feel depressed. It was always the Anxiety side of my illness I struggled with the most, and have to keep on top of still today. I find I have to exercise daily to stay on track. The word I remind myself of daily is 'positivity' and seeing the best in any situation and being grateful for my wife, my family, my friends and the home we live in.

18 years it took me in engineering with two different companies for me to realise I wanted an alternative career. I was never passionate about engineering, but I felt pressured to be earning a wage over being ultimately happy.
Back end of 2018 I decided with the support of my wife to quit my engineering job, and income, and re-train in sport and mental health, whilst also volunteering for my local children's football team.

My aim is to inspire other people to believe & follow their dreams, and do what they love to do. No matter how down you are, you can always pick yourself up and recover. There is always someone you can chat to about how you are feeling 'Don't suffer in silence.'

In November 2019 I made the decision to start my own sports and wellbeing business (Activ8 Wellbeing), as I wanted to pass on my sporting experience to help anyone who has or is experiencing mental ill health through sport and being active.

Disclaimer
I am not a health professional and what works for me may not work for you, but as the saying goes "a problem shared is a problem halved." I am just a guy who has experience of managing my own mental health and if I can help just one other person, then I will be happy.

Stay safe & stay positive!

Warren (Activ8 Wellbeing)

*If you are suffering with your own mental health, I would advise you to seek professional medical help immediately. In the U.K you can contact your local GP for a full range of options within the NHS.

There is some some information on organisations who may be able to help further at the bottom of this page.

Depression

Depression is more than simply feeling unhappy or fed up for a few days. Most people go through periods of feeling down, but when you're depressed you feel persistently sad for weeks or months, rather than just a few days.

Depression affects one in ten people over the course of there lives. It impacts people of all genders and ages - including children.

Symptoms fall in to four categories

Cognitive -

Poor concentration
Indecisiveness
Guilt
Loss of libido
Hopelessness
Worthlessness
Suicidal thoughts

Physiological -

Disordered eating
Lack of energy
Restlessness
Sleep disturbances

Behavioral -

Decreased sexual activity
Loss of appetite
Disordered sleep patterns
Poor self - care and care of others
Suicidal attempts

Emotional -

Sadness
Irritability
Loss of interest or pleasure in usual activities

If you are experiencing any of these symptoms for a prolonged time then please seek professional medical advice asap.

Anxiety

Anxiety is a feeling of unease, like a worry or fear, that can be mild or severe. Everyone feels anxious from time to time and it usually passes once the situation is over.

It can make our heart race, we might feel sweaty, shaky or short of breath. Anxiety can also cause changes in our behaviour, such as becoming overly careful or avoiding things that trigger anxiety.

When anxiety becomes a problem, our worries can be out of proportion within relatively harmless situations. It can feel more intense or overwhelming, and interfere with our everyday lives and relationships.

It is debilitating and can manifest itself in lots of different forms. Here are some of the other symptoms below -

Lack of patience
Constant worrying
Low mood
Stress
Racing thoughts
Changes in appetite
Problems sleeping
Feeling irritable
Dissociation Sweating
Extreme tiredness
Hair Loss
Aching joints

If you suffer with any of these symptoms on a regular basis then please contact your GP

Importance of water

Water is a necessity. You use it for personal hygiene and daily household chores. But the essential purpose of water is to keep your body in good condition. On average, your body is made up of 70% water. Hence, maintaining this fundamental element is crucial to your health.

Drinking water is mostly associated with physical health. However, it also has a significant effect on mental health. If you are experiencing an atypical change in your mood or any emotional breakdown, drinking water is one of the factors you can look into.

This article highlights the importance of drinking water and how it can affect your mind.

Relationship Between Water and Mental Health

Dehydration is linked to mental health conditions. Those with mental health problems easily become dehydrated without realizing it.

People with mental health issues may report increased appetites. While it is one of the symptoms of mental illnesses, increased appetite is also an indicator of dehydration. In other words, water plays a significant role in your mental state.

According to one study published in the World Journal of Psychiatry, drinking five or more glasses of water daily was associated with a lower risk of depression. In another study, they found out that people who drank 2.4 liters a day or more tend to be happier and more positive.

Therefore, you need water to keep yourself hydrated and sound. But how does it specifically affect your mental health?

Three Ways Water Impacts Mental Health

Water can affect your mental health in three significant ways. It can affect your circulation, mood, and cognition.

Your body becomes dehydrated when you do not intake water as rapidly as you release it. The neurons of your brain have already detected dehydration prior to physical symptoms causing slow circulation. It means less oxygen is traveling in your brain and other parts of your body.

Slow circulation influences your energy level and, in turn, affects your mood. When you are dehydrated, your body starts to trigger specific areas of your brain. They can heighten certain emotions, such as making you feel more anxious or nervous.

Because a lack of water can lower your energy to the point of fatigue, it also has an immediate impact on your cognitive functions. Dehydration can focus your brain’s attention to its adverse effects. Thus, you will struggle to concentrate on other things, which can decrease your ability to remember and think critically.

Dehydration can impair your mental health without you realizing it. When you don’t have enough water in your body, the chemical processes in your brain will be disrupted. The production of your brain chemicals, such as serotonin, dopamine, and GABA (Gamma-aminobutyric acid), may either increase or decrease. These chemicals are significant in your overall mental and emotional wellbeing.

But keep in mind that staying hydrated is just one of the many healthy habits you can apply in your daily life. Combining it with exercise, a healthy diet, and other helpful practices may help you achieve better mental health.

Takeaway

People often take their mental health for granted without realizing its effects on their overall wellbeing. It is vital to protect it the same way you take good care of your physical health. Increasing enough water intake is just one of the many ways you can improve your mental health.

Diet

Good Food for Mental Health and Wellness

There are a few things to consider when seeking out the best foods for mental health: a variety of organic, nutrient-rich, unprocessed, low sugar and low-fat foods are said to produce the best results. This goes for the kinds of drinks we consume as well. While the sugary stuff may feel like it’s having a positive effect at the moment, that famed sugar high quickly fades and doesn’t leave that long-lasting positive mental state that people seek.

Eating foods that have the nutrients needed to balance a human body and mind will not only contribute to you putting a big checkmark in the physically healthy section of your chart but also one in the mentally healthy section as well. Since food has an effect on mood and mood has an effect on mental health, paying attention to what kinds of foods affect your mood can help with the overall improvement of mental health.

The best foods for mental health wellness have a number of common vitamins, amino acids, proteins, and other parts to their makeup. For instance,

foods that have B vitamins are thought to combat depressive states and irritability. Foods that are high in B vitamins include liver, fresh orange juice, milk, cheese, poultry, and red meat.
iron can potentially help by contributing to the production of brain chemicals that regulate mood (emotional behaviors). Iron-rich foods include meat, nuts and seeds, dried fruits (prunes, raisins, apricots), and iron-fortified bread and breakfast cereals.
Probiotics, such as miso, yogurt, sauerkraut, and kimchi can help with the body’s absorption of various nutrients needed for a healthy lifestyle.

A few examples of other good foods for mental health are salmon, eggs, and collard greens. Each of these has a lot of nutritional value that can also contribute to bettering your mental health overall.

Your Mental Health May Suffer Without Good Foods

Deficiencies in these areas can contribute not just to poor moods but also mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety. Getting the right variety and amounts of these kinds of foods will allow the body to get the nutrients it needs in order to be properly balanced, including stabilizing mood and brain functionality.

Thinking that you’ll just take a supplement instead might seem like the easy route, but some of these are only found in foods or best brought into the body by food. So while supplements can be a great addition, they shouldn’t be the only source you’re using to get the vitamins and nutrients your body needs.

Consulting your doctor or a nutritionist can help you figure out what you might need to be eating more of. Using a food and mood diary is also a beneficial tool in learning how your body reacts to different foods and how they affect your mental health overall. Doing this can help you develop a plan to get on track to achieving better mental health and wellbeing.

Sleep is important

Getting enough sleep (minimum 8 hours/night is as important to our bodies as eating, drinking and breathing, and is vital for maintaining good mental and physical health. Sleeping helps us to recover from mental as well as physical exertion.

Sleep and health are strongly related - poor sleep can increase the risk of having poor health, and poor health can make it harder to sleep. Sleep disturbances can be one of the first signs of distress. Common mental health problems like anxiety and depression can often underpin sleep problems.

We all know about the myth of telling people to get out of bed and pull themselves together, but lethargy, tiredness, and disturbed sleep can be part of having a mental health problem or a side effect of taking medication. Addressing sleep and sleep disorders as part of mental health treatment is very important, and can be overlooked.

Sleep is especially challenging in shift based work, and in safety-critical industries like the railway, so it’s even more important to make sure we get the right amount of good quality sleep.

We can all benefit from improving the quality of our sleep. For many of us, it may simply be a case of making small lifestyle or attitude adjustments in order to help us sleep better. Up to one third of the population may suffer from insomnia (lack of sleep or poor quality sleep) or other sleep problems. These can affect mood, energy and concentration levels, our relationships, and our ability to stay awake and function at work during the day.

Often basic techniques can improve your sleep. If they don’t work speak to your doctor about other treatments, especially as sleep problems can indicate other health issues.

If you keep having sleep problems, it’s possible there may be an underlying issue, which you should discuss with your GP. Treating sleep problems alongside mental health problems can help address both symptoms and causes, leading to quicker recovery.

Alcohol

While the effects of alcohol can sometimes have a short term positive impact on our mood, in the long term it can cause problems for mental health. Drinking alcohol is linked to a range of mental health issues from depression and memory loss, to suicide.

Regular, heavy drinking interferes with chemicals in the brain that are vital for good mental health. So while we might feel relaxed after a drink, in the long run alcohol has an impact on mental health and can contribute to feelings of depression and anxiety, and make stress harder to deal with.

How alcohol affects our brain chemistry

The brain relies on a delicate balance of chemicals and processes. Alcohol is a depressant, which means it can disrupt that balance, affecting our thoughts, feelings and actions – and sometimes our long-term mental health. This is partly down to neurotransmitters, which are chemicals that help to transmit signals from one nerve (or neuron) in the brain to another.

For example, the relaxed feeling we can experience if we have a drink is due to the chemical changes alcohol has caused in the brain. A drink can make some people feel more confident and less anxious, as the alcohol begins to suppress the part of the brain associated with inhibition.

As we drink more, the impact on our brain function increases. And regardless of the mood we’re in, with increasing alcohol consumption, it’s possible that negative emotions will take over, leading to a negative impact on mental health. Alcohol can be linked to aggression and some people report becoming angry, aggressive, anxious or depressed when they drink.

Alcohol and anxiety

For someone experiencing anxiety, a drink might help them feel more at ease, but this feeling is short-lived. The so-called ‘relaxed’ feeling somebody may say they experience after having a drink is due to the chemical changes alcohol causes in the brain. But these effects wear off fast. Relying on alcohol to mask anxiety could also lead to a greater reliance on it to relax. A likely side-effect of this is the increased risk of build upping up a of tolerance to alcohol. Over time you will need to drink more alcohol to get the same feeling. And, in the medium to longer term, this pattern often leads to alcohol dependence.

Feelings of anxiety can happen with a hangover, too. As we process alcohol, we can begin to experience psychological symptoms, such as feeling depressed, anxious or agitated. For some, these feelings are barely noticeable. But if anxiety is already an issue, the hangover effect can make those symptoms worse.

Drinking alcohol can also make a person feel more anxious in certain situations. When we drink, we don’t always respond to all the cues around us. If we’re prone to anxiety and notice something that could be interpreted as threatening in the environment, there is a tendency to focus on that and miss the other less threatening - or neutral - information.

To reduce stress or anxiety without alcohol, try exercise or relaxation methods, such as meditation or yoga. Or try breathing techniques when you feel worried or anxious. Talking to somebody you know about how you’re feeling is also a positive thing to do.

Drinking & depression: a vicious cycle

Drinking heavily and regularly is associated with symptoms of depression, although it can be difficult to separate cause and effect. This means it’s not always clear whether drinking alcohol causes a person to experience symptoms of depression. What we do know is that alcohol affects several nerve-chemical systems within our bodies which are important in regulating our mood. Studies show that depression can follow on from heavy drinking. And that reducing or stopping drinking can improve mood.

Medications prescribed for depression should not be mixed with alcohol. Some commonly prescribed anti-depressants tend to increase the risk of relapse to heavy drinking in people who are trying to cut down or abstain from alcohol, so antidepressants should be only taken with great caution and only when prescribed by your doctor.